Feds target those giving polygraph-beating tips

WASHINGTON - Federal agents have launched a criminal investigation of instructors who claim they can teach job applicants how to pass lie-detector tests as part of the Obama administration's unprecedented crackdown on security violators and leakers.

The criminal inquiry, which has not been acknowledged publicly, is aimed at discouraging criminals and spies from infiltrating the U.S. government by using the polygraph-beating techniques, which are said to include controlled breathing, muscle tensing, tongue biting and mental arithmetic.

Records seized

So far, authorities have targeted at least two instructors, one of whom has pleaded guilty to federal charges. Investigators confiscated business records from the two men, which included the names of as many as 5,000 people who had sought polygraph-beating advice. U.S. agencies have determined that at least 20 of them applied for government and federal contracting jobs, and at least half of that group was hired, including by the National Security Agency.

By attempting to prosecute the instructors, federal officials are adopting a controversial legal stance that sharing such information should be treated as a crime and is not protected under the First Amendment in some circumstances.

"Nothing like this has been done before," John Schwartz, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official, said of the legal approach in a June speech to a professional polygraphers' conference in Charlotte, N.C. "Most certainly our nation's security will be enhanced.

"There are a lot of bad people out there. This will help us remove some of those pests from society," he added.

The undercover stings are being cited as the latest examples of the Obama administration's emphasis on rooting out "insider threats," a catchall phrase meant to describe employees who might become spies, leak to the news media, commit crimes or become corrupted in some way.

The federal government gives polygraph tests to about 70,000 people a year for security clearances and jobs, but most courts won't allow polygraph results to be submitted as evidence, citing the machines' unreliability. Scientists question whether polygraphers can identify liars by interpreting measurements of blood pressure, sweat activity and respiration.

Citing the scientific skepticism, one attorney compared the prosecution of polygraph instructors to indicting someone for practicing voodoo.

"If someone stabs a voodoo doll in the heart with a pin and the victim they intended to kill drops dead of a heart attack, are they guilty of murder?" asked Gene Iredale, a California attorney who represents federal defendants. "What if the person who dropped dead believed in voodoo?"